Senior Healthcare Data Engineer

Milliman•Seattle, WA

7h•Hybrid

About The Position

Milliman's Seattle Health Practice is looking for an experienced data professional to join their VRDC analytics team. In this role, the individual will develop and maintain data pipelines that process healthcare claims and enrollment data, implement measure logic and business rules from CMS and industry specifications, and contribute to the ongoing improvement of analytic codebases and data products. The Seattle Health Practice partners with various organizations including insurance companies, health plans, government agencies, healthcare providers, reinsurers, Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), health technology firms, and employers, with a team of over 180 actuarial professionals, consultants, IT specialists, and operations staff. A significant portion of the work involves Medicare data accessed through the CMS CCW Virtual Research Data Center (VRDC), a secure research environment where individual-level data must be processed in place and can only be exported after aggregation, cell suppression, and CMS review. The role also involves working outside the VRDC - post-processing exported results, integrating client data and other non-VRDC sources, and developing tools and analytics in standard development environments. Code is maintained outside the VRDC using standard version control practices. The VRDC is a secure virtual desktop environment operated by CMS with no internet access, and data cannot be exported at the individual level, with all outputs subject to cell suppression rules. Success requires comfort with these constraints and resourcefulness. The team's codebases span multiple languages and platforms and are actively evolving, valuing informed perspectives on code organization and maintenance while recognizing pragmatic tradeoffs in a production analytics environment.

Requirements

5+ years of professional experience in data engineering, analytics, or a quantitative analyst role with substantial hands-on coding
Healthcare data experience — Medicare/Medicaid/commercial claims, enrollment files, pharmacy data, or similar
Strong SQL proficiency — complex joins, window functions, conditional aggregation, and careful handling of NULLs and edge cases
Programming experience in Python, SAS, or both; willingness to work across languages as needed
Experience processing large datasets and an understanding of performance considerations at scale
Experience implementing business logic from technical specifications
Familiarity with data modeling and structuring large analytical datasets for reuse
Demonstrated ability to learn complex domains and business rules quickly
Strong written and verbal communication skills
A genuine interest in code quality — you think about naming, structure, validation, and maintainability

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with healthcare quality measures, such as HEDIS, PQA and CAHPS
Experience with Databricks, PySpark, or distributed data processing frameworks
Git-based version control and collaborative development workflows
Experience working within the CMS CCW/VRDC or comparable restricted research data environments
Experience with agentic AI coding tools such as Cursor, Copilot, Codex, or Claude Code
Background in healthcare consulting or health plan analytics

Responsibilities

Develop and maintain data pipelines that process healthcare claims, enrollment, and related administrative data
Own components of data pipelines end-to-end, from raw data processing through final analytic outputs
Translate technical specifications and business rules into well-structured, maintainable code
Work with large-scale healthcare datasets (tens to hundreds of millions of rows) within the VRDC's secure computing environment
Perform data validation, quality checks, and reconciliation to ensure analytic accuracy
Identify opportunities to improve code quality, reduce duplication, and strengthen testing, validation, and documentation
Ensure reproducibility and traceability of results across data refreshes and measurement years
Communicate technical findings, methodology, and data issues clearly to actuarial and consulting staff
Manage concurrent workstreams across multiple measurement years and data refresh cycles
Develop the ability to manage client relationships and successfully generate new business with both new and existing clients.

Benefits

Medical, Dental and Vision – Coverage for employees, dependents, and domestic partners.
Employee Assistance Program (EAP) – Confidential support for personal and work-related challenges.
401(k) Plan – Includes a company matching program and profit-sharing contributions.
Discretionary Bonus Program – Recognizing employee contributions.
Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) – Pre-tax savings for dependent care, transportation, and eligible medical expenses.
Paid Time Off (PTO) – Begins accruing on the first day of work. Full-time employees accrue 15 days per year, and employees working less than full-time accrue PTO on a prorated basis.
Holidays – A minimum of 10 paid holidays per year.
Family Building Benefits – Includes adoption and fertility assistance.
Paid Parental Leave – Up to 12 weeks of paid leave for employees who meet eligibility criteria.
Life Insurance & AD&D – 100% of premiums covered by Milliman.
Short-Term and Long-Term Disability – Fully paid by Milliman.